July 20, 2022

Dear Benjamin,

Thank you for your letter. Against the background of a world perennially unable to find peace and perenially unable to reconcile itself with the constraints and limits imposed on us by nature, your reassurances that you and Carrie are well seem particularly gratifying to me. I very much hope that you continue to derive satisfaction from your work.

As for myself, I hesitate to repeat what is obvious, that at age 92, I am very old, and  I hesitate to ask whether it is ever permissible to articulate the obvious question at what juncture one gets to be too old, for ones own good, or for the good of ones family. Perhaps that's a naughty question - since my obvious obligation is to assimilate myself to the future whatever it may turn out to be.  

When I was 15 years old, a senior in high school, I was very proficient at the simple physics that we were taught, and I thought I wanted to become a physicist. When I got to college, I changed my mind, and studied literature instead, but the many intervening years have been adumbrated by wistful nostalgia for what might have been. Recently I have spent many hours each day reading essays and lecture notes about diverse physics topics.  While I am reading, I think I "understand" the exposition, but what I can remember, is very spotty. It's not surprising that the frailty of my 92 years old memory would preclude my passing even the simplest of examinations. But then, at the same time, I become aware of the extent to which the plethora of details can block a different order of understanding.  I have learned to read science as literature, with a sense that some of the implications of the theories, of the ideas and of the "facts" which are stated so dogmatically, are not susceptible to rationalization even by those who expound them most emphatically, but must be memorized, must be internalized and believed, accepted on faith, like articles of a religion in a secret language which we repeat over and over again to confirm our membership in a professional community.  But then, in order to demonstrate that I am not dreaming, I pinch myself to prove that I am awake, and I realize that what I have invented is but a "metaphysical" explanation to mask my ignorance and incompetence.

Meanwhile I send you and Carrie my very best wishes. Love, Jochen